A Gentlemen’s Disagreement

Episode 38 - A New Day in Boston

On November 2, 2021, Boston will elect its first female mayor. In this episode, we take a closer look at the two candidates, Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George. We discuss the backgrounds of the two candidates, their proposed policies, and what the election of either would tell us about the future of Boston.

Episode 37 - The Forest and the Trees

We begin by discussing the fallout from the leaking of Jon Gruden's emails, and we zoom out to look at what his emails say about structural, systemic issues within the NFL and society at large (0:30-29:27). We then zoom in on a few incidents involving China, Taiwan, and the United States to see if there is potentially something bigger brewing (29:55-51:01).

Episode 36 - Hitting the Ceiling

After a month off, we are back to discuss the debt ceiling and all the machinations surrounding it (0:30-29:51), before touching on the fallouts from the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal and the January 6th House Investigation Committee (30:09-50:48).

Episode 35 - Mandates, Mental Health, and Music with Brian Scully

We, rather reluctantly, wade back into the Covid conversation in this week's episode where we are joined by musician Brian Scully. Scully shares with us how Covid and all of the accompanying restrictions over the past eighteen months have affected his family and his career. We also debate the responses from our leaders at the local, state, and national levels from March of 2020 through today.

Episode 34 - Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires with Captain Colin Murphy

20 years, $2 trillion dollars, and countless lives. The toll of America's longest war is difficult to quantify, and perhaps even harder to swallow given its inglorious ending. On this week's episode, we get a Marine's perspective on the war in Afghanistan as Marine Corps veteran Captain Colin Murphy joins us for a discussion on what we gained, what we lost, and, hopefully, what we learned over these past two decades in conflict.

Episode 33 - Ask What Your Government Should Be Doing For You

We begin this week by recapping some of the major storylines from the first week of the Olympics (0:30-25:23) before having a discussion specifically about neoliberalism, more generally about how the economic policy pendulum has swung back and forth in the U.S. over the past century, and more generally, still, about what we think government should be doing for its citizens (25:47-1:09:33).

Episode 32 - Tokyo Risk

With the 2020 Summer Olympics finally starting this week, we spent this episode discussing all things Olympics, including whether the Games should be taking place at all (0:30-22:25), our favorite events, and some U.S. athletes to keep an eye on in these Games (22:41-40:32). We conclude by reminiscing about some of our favorite all-time Olympic memories and debating U.S. participation in the 2022 Beijing Games (40:43-1:01:12).

Episode 31 - Ranked Choice Voting Faces Its Biggest Test

We spend the first segment of this episode diving into the NYC Mayoral Race and discuss everything that was on the ballot in that race, including the candidates themselves, crime and the police, and ranked choice voting (0:30-26:34). We then hit on a variety of different topics including the revival of bipartisanship with the infrastructure agreement, the conclusion of the Supreme Court's term, and the newfound ability for college athletes to get paid (26:50-56:17). 

Episode 30 - The Things We Never Learned

This week we discuss Juneteenth (0:30-19:28), the Tulsa Massacre and Critical Race Theory (19:46-44:50), and then we close by profiling two, perhaps lesser known, Black Americans (45:44-1:03-:39).

Episode 29 - Filibustering Bipartisanship

We begin this week's episode by considering some listener feedback we received about last week's Israel-Palestine discussion (0:30-27:12). We then spend some time discussing the state of bipartisanship in D.C. through the lenses of the filibuster, infrastructure, and voting rights (27:30-51:26). We wrap up by analyzing Naomi Osaka's withdrawal from the French Open, what it says about the mental health of athletes, and what it means for their relationship with the media who cover them (51:44-1:07:00).